by A. S. Green
“We don’t know what kind of lifespan your halfling status will offer. I’d like the chance to find out, and that means ye staying here. Safe.”
“This is unbelievable. If you want to work alone, fine. Two can play at that game.” She picked up the papers, folded them, and shoved them in her back pocket.
“Meghan—” Aiden warned.
She gave him a hard look. “Can I use your laptop?”
“It’s in the library.”
She nodded. She’d seen it there earlier. Then she grabbed a banana from the bowl of fruit on the table and marched out.
“Wait,” Cormac said, reaching toward her as she passed.
She dodged around his hand and stomped off for the stairs.
“What were those papers?” she heard him ask his brothers.
“Maybe if you’d been here, you’d know,” was Declan’s snarky response.
When she got up to the library, she closed the door and sat at the desk where Aiden’s laptop was charging.
With a calming breath, she unfolded Declan’s paper to check her spelling and typed in her first search: Ely, MN Kawishiwi Falls
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CORMAC
It had been two hours since Meghan stormed out of the kitchen, and the sun was starting to rise. Cormac was getting more and more agitated the longer this went on. He had hoped her anger would have subsided by now. Apparently she was going to make him suffer. He knew he deserved it. Still, if he had to do it again, he wouldn’t change a thing.
The three brothers had moved to the sitting room and were doing just that, side-by-side on the couch. Cormac had glamoured dry clothes, but the ends of his hair were still damp from the rain.
Aiden was reading his book. Declan had his right ankle resting on his left knee. His foot jiggled with restless energy as he watched vintage footage from a nineteen eight-six football game: Bears vs. Patriots.
Every few minutes, Cormac looked up toward the ceiling, feeling the distance between himself and Meghan like it was a tangible thing. The need to be with her clawed at his insides as much as his hound.
His brothers had explained the message from Meghan’s dream and now Cormac’s belly twisted with adrenaline. Finally, he could stand it no longer, and he suddenly pushed to his feet, announcing, “I’m going to the falls.”
Both brothers looked up at him.
“Now?” Aiden asked, closing his book.
Cormac pulled his hair back and fastened it at the nape of his neck. “Now.”
“And what do ye expect to find?” Declan asked, leaning back into the corner of the couch.
“Nothing. But then I can come back and tell Meghan that her dream was just a dream. That’s all she needs, to know for sure. I can give that to her.” Cormac headed out of the room and both brothers were quickly on his heels. He heard Aiden’s book hit the replacement coffee table with a hard thwap.
“What ye can give her is the chance to go with ye,” Aiden said, following him down the hallway.
“No.”
“She’s already pissed at ye,” Declan reminded him. “Ye want to make things worse?”
Cormac entered the kitchen and started rustling around in the junk drawer. He pulled out a set of small keys.
Aiden shook his head when he saw them. “Tell me you’re not serious. Ye can’t lock her in the library.”
“I couldn’t be more serious,” Cormac said. “Ye don’t know her like I do. She’s reckless. If she finds out I’ve left again, she’ll try to follow me.”
Cormac knew the truth of that statement like he knew his own name, and he would use that knowledge to protect her—from what was out there, and from what was inside of her. She was brave, sure, but also headstrong and impulsive. And there was still much for her to learn about the new world she’d chosen to live in.
“Ye do that and ye might not have your balls by morning,” Declan warned.
“Or her,” Aiden added, and the weight of that statement sat with them in the room.
Cormac gritted his teeth, then powered through. “It’s just for a little while. Just until I get back. And I don’t want either of you to let her out.”
Aiden threw his hands in the air. “What the hell is wrong with ye? If Da—”
Cormac shut him up with a glare. “If Da had known the danger that was right outside his door, he would have shoved Mum in the cupboard with us and locked her in. He would have hidden her, protected her, he would have done anything to make sure she was safe, and ye know it.”
Neither of them had anything to say to that. They knew he was right, and that urged him forward.
“Well, I now have the luxury he didn’t. I know what danger is right outside our door, and I’m not going to make his mistake. Meghan will forgive me.”
“Ye sure of that?” Aiden asked.
“Eventually. She will.” He could explain. She’d understand once she heard him out. She had before. She would again.
“Listen, brother,” Aiden said. “I understand what you’re saying. But as reckless as ye think Curly is, you’re no better.”
Cormac narrowed his eyes.
“Talk to her. If you’d talked to us before ye left fifty years ago, maybe we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now. This could have been finished a long time ago.”
“Just think before ye act,” Declan added. “Some things are hard to reverse.”
Cormac exhaled.
As if sensing his advantage, Declan took the keys from his hand. “Talk to her.”
“Maybe throw in an apology for good measure,” Aiden said.
Cormac stared at his brothers for a beat, then slowly inhaled. He closed his eyes, releasing the breath and giving his head a nod of resignation. He knew they were right. Too often he’d acted on the impulses of his heart. It might be time to give cool reason a chance.
He headed for the stairs. He probably should have taken her with him this morning. He should have proven to her that they were partners, in every sense of the word. If he’d done that, there wouldn’t be this emotional chasm widening between them.
When he got upstairs, he glanced toward his bedroom first. Not seeing her there, he went to the library. The door was closed. He pressed his ear to the wood and listened. Nothing. Was it possible she’d fallen asleep?
Maybe he should go with his original plan. He’d have the assurance that she was safe, but she would be asleep and none the wiser that she was locked in. He could be back before she woke. He knew what the right choice was, but the assurance of her safety was so enticing.
He imagined her sleeping face, and he longed to leave with the image of that peaceful expression in his mind, rather than the angry one she’d given him in the kitchen. He never wanted to see that again. And that’s what made his decision.
Slowly. Quietly. He turned the knob and pushed the door halfway open. The laptop was open on the desk and displaying a website page. The desk was littered with papers that lifted slightly in a breeze.
Cormac glanced toward the window. It was open; the curtains that hung on the left side of the rod were pushed open. The curtains that hung on the right side were…missing?
He pushed the door all the way open and strode inside, turning left, then right. Meghan was gone.
“Aiden! Declan!” Cormac rounded the desk and strode for the window. The missing curtains were tied to a world globe with a heavy lead base and draped over the sill, hanging to the ground below.
Aiden and Declan ran into the room from behind him. “What’s going on?”
“She left,” Cormac said.
“Fuck!” Aiden exclaimed.
“What’s all this?” Declan asked.
Cormac turned over his shoulder and joined his brother at the desk. The computer screen showed a twenty-year-old news article from the Phoenix Daily Press. The headline read: Local Prostitute Found Dead.
Below that was a photograph of a woman with long blond hair lying on the ground, her hair fanned around her head, her bo
dy in an awkward position with an arm bent in a way it should not bend. Out of propriety, the photographer had used black rectangular markings to cover the dead woman’s eyes.
Open beside the computer was Meghan’s social services file, and at the top of the stack of papers was a photograph clipped to a police report about her mother’s death—the report Branna had said didn’t seem “quite right;” the photograph she didn’t think Meghan should see.
The file photo of Meghan’s dead mother was exactly the same as the photograph Meghan had found online—except the woman’s hair in the file photo had been changed so that it was dark and curly.
“Photoshopped?” Aiden asked, picking up the supposed photo of Meghan’s mother. “The photo of Meghan’s mum is a fake?”
“Fuck!” Cormac erupted and swung, putting his fist into the paneling and splintering the wood. What did this mean? Nothing good. That was for sure. He could think of only one person who had reason to provide child protection with evidence of Meghan’s mother’s death so many years ago.
“How would Meghan even find the real photo online?” Declan asked.
Aiden shook his head. “She’s resourceful. Maybe she took a picture of the file photo with her phone and did an image search, or—?”
Declan cut him off. “But why? What does this even mean?”
Cormac turned and stormed back to the window. “Meghan thinks her mum is still alive.”
“Is she?” Aiden asked. “Alive?”
“Hell if I know,” Cormac muttered. What else in that file might be fake? Meghan was already unsteady, not knowing where she came from, what she was, where she belonged. No wonder she ran.
Chapter Thirty
MEGHAN
Obviously, Meghan hadn’t thought this through.
She had a knack for making impulsive decisions. She also had a talent for being too stubborn to admit it, and she was too proud to ever go in reverse. That’s what made her shimmy down a curtain to get outside the house. That’s what convinced her two weeks ago that jumping into some rando guy’s car and heading to Canada was a good idea. Before that, it was what made her leave home and make a myriad of other decisions throughout her life that landed her in detention halls, banned her from friends’ houses, and got her kicked out of Sunday school.
Not all of her impulsive decisions had been bad ones. There was no desire to reverse on Cormac, and she’d been right to leave home. Hell, there wasn’t much in her past she regretted, except for her failure to plan. Planning would have made each of those decisions go a little more smoothly.
“Ooof.” She pulled up her foot and checked the back of her heel. The grass was wet, which meant her shoes were wet, which meant she had a torn and screaming blister on the back of her heel. Grabbing an extra pair of socks before climbing out of the library window…that would have been some solid gold planning right there. At least she thought to grab her jacket.
Meghan gingerly slipped her shoe back on and looked down at the picture she held in her hands. It was an image of Kawishiwi Falls she’d found online right before she got up the nerve to open her child protection file and saw the photo that set her on this path.
The falls were supposedly only fifteen to twenty miles from the house. It would take all day, but she knew she could walk it. Of course, tilting would have been easier. With the current state of her feet, much easier.
The problem was, she’d never been to the falls before, and she obviously couldn’t see them from the MacConalls’ library. She thought focusing on a photograph might help, but it didn’t.
The first time she tried, she only moved from the desk to the window, and that kind of progress was not worth the physical exertion it took to move herself through space.
So she’d fashioned a rope from the curtains and escaped, just like old times. In high school, she’d been a master escape artist. She’d only been caught twice, her aunt and uncle grounding her both times. A memory struck her. It wasn’t long after that they’d mounted iron bars on the outside of her window. They said it was because there’d been a crime wave in the neighborhood. Now she wondered if they thought the iron would keep her in.
Her escape skills were definitely rusty now, judging by her skinned palms, but she’d made it out without notice.
She walked a mile from the house, totally prepared to walk to the falls when it occurred to her she’d been to Ely before. She could tilt there, at least, and shave off some of the distance. Which was what she did. The five-mile hike from Ely to the falls was much more manageable, though it did nothing to help her blister.
She tried to ignore the pain by focusing on other things, like how she hoped it would take a while before Cormac realized she was gone. Once he did, he’d know where to look. Aiden and Declan would make sure of it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him with her. She did. In fact, she felt skittish without him. But if he discovered her, he’d force her back. He’d be kind about it, but he’d be persuasive. And she couldn’t afford for him to steer her around.
She needed to know the truth about her mother, once and for all. She hadn’t had much of it in her twenty-one years. She was going to insist on it from now on.
Meghan continued to walk in the dark, hoping she was moving in the right direction. She figured, eventually, she’d find a road or maybe even a trail sign. An hour later, the sun began to rise and the first muffled roar of the falls hit her ears.
She took the picture from her pocket again and unfolded it. Perhaps being able to hear the water would be as good of a connection for tilting as seeing or remembering it would be. She stared down at the image of the raging cataract, the black rocks that formed the channel, and the yellow foam that churned in the basin.
She closed her eyes, pictured them in her mind, let the sound fill her ears, and willed herself there. She felt just a tickle in her feet at first, and then a pins-and-needles sensation, as if she’d had them curled under her too long while watching a marathon of Diners Drive-ins and Dives.
It was a slower process than the four times before, and she felt every bit of it, starting with the prickling that wicked up her legs, then faded to a warm fluidity, as if all her bones went liquid.
She knew the worst was coming, but before she could brace herself, she was sucked into a tunnel that spun and stretched and distorted her body and senses, until all she was aware of was a rushing wind, and then…the violent roar of Kawishiwi Falls.
Meghan opened her eyes and blinked. It was just like in the photo. She was on a flat rocky plane at the top of the falls, and the rushing water broke and fell over multiple tiers of black rock before hitting the basin below. The pitted rocks under her feet were wet from the spray, and somewhere through the near-deafening sound she thought she could hear a woman calling.
Meghan pulled her fleece jacket tighter around her and slowly turned, hoping to see the only woman who could fill in the gaps of the last sixteen confusing years.
The first thing her eyes settled on was a leannán sídhe in black leggings and a torn black sweater, at the edge of the woods and not thirty feet from the churning cataract. But she was not the leannán Meghan had hoped to see. In fact, the sight only served to confuse her more.
The leannán was on her knees, her face bruised, and one eye swollen shut. Her chest was bound to the trunk of a pine tree with a rusted chain, and in her lap was Meghan’s worn, nappy-fleeced daisy pillow.
She lifted her face to stare, one-eyed, at Meghan, and she mouthed the words, I’m so sorry.
“Dreams…” said a woman.
Meghan’s head jerked, and she looked from the sídhe toward the voice.
Her Aunt Darlene stepped forward from the trees, followed by her uncle and five strangers, all of them dressed in cloaks. “…are dangerous things.”
Meghan staggered back a couple steps, closer to the water. “Where’s my mom?”
“Dead,” her aunt said, continuing her advance. “And a long time ago.”
“No.”
“But the photo,” Meghan started, trying to understand. Her mother wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. “It wasn’t really her in the photo.”
“True enough,” said her aunt. “But back then, the county needed proof of her death. We couldn’t let a coroner near her body and learn she wasn’t human. No coroner, no death certificate. It was the best we could do with little time, and frankly the county was glad to have you off their books.”
Meghan shook her head. It had to be another lie. “But she said she was here at the falls.” Meghan glanced across the faces of the five strangers who formed a line behind her aunt and uncle.
Her aunt glanced over her shoulder at the beaten and chained sídhe who was still clutching Meghan’s daisy pillow. “She planted those dreams in your head. She’s been helping us ever since you left home, though with the distance, it took some time for her to break all the way through. Believe me… If there was any other way to get you back under our control… Imagine my surprise when I ran into you in an alley.”
Meghan closed her eyes and tried to tilt herself back to Cormac. She vowed she’d beg his forgiveness, tell him he was absolutely right. She should have listened; he knew better when it came to this world…
But her multiple attempts and final success at tilting over the last few hours had stripped her of all her strength. She wasn’t going anywhere, at least, nowhere she wanted to go.
“Get her,” her aunt said, and this time there would be no escape.
Chapter Thirty-One
AIDEN
Aiden MacConall leaned against a tree, deep in the woods near the top of Kawishiwi Falls. With him were Cormac, Declan, and—he could hardly believe it—Branna, the púca who had tormented him his entire life. By Danu, why had he agreed to this?
